Lucy HIAM was born in Edinburgh in 1931, when her father Zheng Yitong was attending the University of Edinburgh. He later became the Chinese Minister to Australia (1945-1946) and the Chinese Ambassador to Iran (1946-1949) under the KMT government. Her family experienced successive turmoils occurring in China during the 20th century. A British subject and a registered nurse as well as a midwife, Lucy arrived in Wellington in 1957 to marry her English fiancé, whom she met in England. Over the following 60 years, she has lived in Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland, and has been known as a public health nurse, a coffee shop owner, a Chinese cook on a radio show, a teacher of Chinese language, an active fundraiser for charity, and a devoted Catholic church goer. Indeed, her personal life is not typical among the Chinese in New Zealand, but casts a light on the complex aspects of how a Chinese migrant woman has engaged with and been accepted by the mainstream society.

Phoebi LI

2018

Lucy HIAM

Reading Lucy HIAM’s tiny and precious commemorative book, I am drawn to a page that her mother CHEN Chun’e [陳春萼] wrote to her in 1944 at her age 13: “If one lacks gravitas, then he [or she] will not inspire awe in others.”* [君子不重則不威]. It is an aphorism from the Analects of Confucius [論語] to encourage her to have dignity in what she does and how she behaves. In doing so, she will gain respect from the others. Lucy** went through a turbulent life when young. Her father ZHENG Yitong [鄭亦同] was a government official in wartime. She was born in Edinburgh, and has lived in Australia and Iran. She became a first-generation New Zealand immigrant when she married her husband in Wellington in 1957.

When I posed Lucy next to a dragon lamp, sunlight flooded in and glowed upward, radiating and enlivening her, the dragon, and the family photographs on the wall. In the portrait photograph, she stands with dignity. In the still life photograph, I centred the camera angle on the commemorative book with the page of her mother’s dictum opened. Behind it is a photograph of her parents in an oval ivory frame. They sit proudly on a wood-crafted chest. The falling sunlight shivered through the curtain, unevenly tossing a turbulent and yet respectful vibe.

I am fortunate to have captured the two transient moments of awed sunlight.